The House That Shadows Built (1928)

242 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT are among the exceptions which prove the rule. When Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford went abroad, Madrid, Rome, and Paris welcomed them as hysterically as London, Moscow, and Berlin. Curiously, Lasky adds, the British have the same quality. Though other races may dislike the abstract Empire, they cherish no aversion to the concrete type. However, the Briton’s lifelong training in repression of emotion hampers him as a pantomimist. Our manners have run to the other extreme; while we do not weep with the unrestrained naturalness of the Latin, generally we throw our emotions to the surface. Perhaps the British will learn the trick. That is why some of our lords of the moving picture believe that the menace to our supremacy will come — if it ever does come — not from Berlin but from London. Finally, war or no war, Europe would have encountered eventually the same financial obstacle — the population and the per-capita wealth which enable us, before we send a film abroad, to spend with millionaire lavishness on a production and get our money back from the domestic sales. Perhaps the “talking movie” is on its way; perhaps within a decade managers may present Hampden in Shakespeare or Gemier in Moliere, with complete illusion of motion and voice. How that may effect the “silent drama,” no one can guess. Certainly, the talking film cannot become international like the one-dimensional